* Posts by TonyJ

1635 publicly visible posts • joined 30 Dec 2010

BT fiber rollout passes 17 million homes, altnet challenge grows

TonyJ

Re: Ah, yes, those altnets

Yes, Openreach kept vacillating between coming soon and coming between 2024 and the end of 2026. Now, despite the entire area showing as green on their rollout map (which granted, does include the "currently building") it has gone to "Not available" - did so a couple of months ago.

Meantime, YouFibre (Netomnia) rolled out. Not only do I get gig/gig synchronous and a static IP for less than a third of what Virgin cost (the FTTC here wouldn't cut it - 32Mb down and 1Mb up), but they were happy to assist my swapping out their kit for my own with no headaches. And... if you take their static IP, then they do not port block, so even though for the first time in years I took a chance on a domestic, rather than business, line, I can happily self host e.g. email.

And to top it off - when I was on Virgin, I rarely saw 1/3 (occasionally maybe 2/3, but not often) of what I was paying so much for (and could never get anywhere with them), my cabled connection is topping out at 936 down and 912 up. And even wireless is hitting 700-800 down with 600-650 up.

When I have had to get support, (twice), they are quick and knowledgeable. And helpful.

But, I do know they are burning cash like there is no tomorrow so I really hope they manage to stick around.

Windows 10's demise nears, but Linux is forever

TonyJ

Re: Office on the web

I lead a multi (tens of) million Euro programme. The whole thing is run on Excel sheets with complex forumula, styles, macros, pivot tables, etc.

There are much better ways, but it's chronological error - i.e. we've always done it this way.

The client is often the same.

I have at least two of these tracking Excel sheets that will not even display properly in LO.

TonyJ

Re: Office on the web

I came to say exactly this. For a very simple document/spreadsheet...sure... for anything more? Fuck no!

Citrix slated to axe its Technology Professional program

TonyJ

It isn't a certification in the same way as if you passed an exam - it's a recognition of contribution.

If you look back through my posts on here you will see I've said the same thing though - they have become much less a way of identifying skill and solely a revenue generator for the vendor, as can be evidenced by the rush every year to find people in partner organisations who can quickly pass the necessary exams to keep the accreditation level...

TonyJ

Oh well...

...I've mentioned before that I spent a significant chunk of my career working with Citrix products. I'd go so far as to say that at one point, I probably knew more than anyone outside of the developers (and even them, for some of the earlier iterations of what would become nFuse Enterprise, having worked with the creator of nFuse to build it).

I was CCEA number 54, (or so I was told) back in the day. You got access to a CCEA-only website. One whose entire content was simply a list of the exams you needed to pass to become a CCEA...erm... yeah.

Over the years, I contributed heavily on forums, support sites etc but got nothing back for my efforts. Not even vague recognition.

But I haven't touched it in years, now. My last big project on it was 2018 and even before that, it was a few years between them. The writing has simply been on the wall for a company who sold the ability to connect to on-premise applications over slow connectivity such as dialup.

Now you have most apps as web-apps, and/or fast connectivity into them, the whole reason to have it has slowly disintegrated. There are still a few shining lights (or were when I last worked with it) such as the NetScalers, but again...super expensive by comparison.

Why anyone these days would pay to have expensive Citrix licenses on top of expensive RDS CALS is beyond me when the latter can do 90% of the former.

VDI has never taken off to the extent the likes of Citrix hoped it would - again, it's all the complexity of thin client environment with all the complexity of a fat client OS, that requires a highly perfomant back-end, to give you what? A tiny selection of valid use cases.

They've been circling the drain for years now. All this is doing is shoving a hot poker up the arses of people who've helped to get them where they were (I won't say are, because they've fucked it up themselves) who will now move onto other things and let the death spiral accelerate.

It's a shame but it has an air of inevitability that I've called out more than once.

User said he did nothing that explained his dead PC – does a new motherboard count?

TonyJ

Getting Windows to boot on changed hardware in 2025

(Forgive me if this has been mentioned in the comments but I haven't the time to read through them at the moment).

It's trivial. And Windows copes now.

I've literally just done it moving the SSD from a Lenovo laptop to a Dell Mini Desktop for a POS* that my fiance uses.

There were no blue screens. No complaints. Nothing. It booted and just worked.

And that was using a 2.5" SATA SSD in place of the original Dell's m.2 SSD.

And it isn't the first time I've done it - not even with that particular SSD - it was originally in an aging NCR POS.

Now 20+ years ago, when you had to use tricks to inject drivers into the running OS before moving it - yeah it was a royal PITA, but not anymore.

*Point of Sale, not Piece of Shit :-)

Open source router firmware project OpenWrt ships its own entirely repairable hardware

TonyJ

Great for a VPN router

I used to have a virtualised OpenWRT router running for a good while that was setup with an OpenVPN connection out to the likes of Surshark or Nord. I could then, as I chose, use the OpenWRT as a default gateway for as many devices as I wanted to route out via VPN only.

Nowadays I do the same thing with a tiny little GL-iNet Brume 2500A but rather than OpenVPN it's a Wireguard connection with a kill switch to prevent traffic passing if the VPN drops.

Works a treat and is tiny, low powered and their support is excellent. It died after about 18months and they not only replaced it, but as the A was the only version available (same thing but aluminium case rather than plastic) they upgraded it and paid the return postage.

Wipro orders hybrid work as other tech giants make full-time pants-wearing mandatory

TonyJ

More likely they expect to attract the better talent that will inevitably leave other companies that are hell bent on forcing people back into an office, regardless of what sense it makes - or doesn't make.

Now Dell salespeople must be onsite five days a week

TonyJ

Re: AI in HR...

The irony being that HR is one of the roles AI could easily be trained to do. After all, they've proven time and time again that they have no semblance of humanity in them.

A look under the hood of the 3D-printed, Raspberry Pi powered 'suicide pod'

TonyJ

Re: sounds complicated

Rebreathers extract the CO2 by use of a scrubber material - Sofnolime being the one usually bought. You effectively breathe the same breath through the closed loop the entire dive which is why they have no bubbles in the traditional sense of open circuit divers. You top the gas up using diluent - a breathable gas for the depth and type of dive you are doing as descend.

Our bodies only extract roughly 4% of the O2 from each breath, so you once the CO2 is scrubbed, the gas is passed over (usually three) O2 sensors which determine if, and how much O2 to reinject into the loop to keep the mixture breathable.

That's why, when you see rebreather divers, they have tiny 3l cylinders (larger can be used for expedition dives) compared to the much larger ones that open circuit divers use.

However. They can kill you in unique and unexpected ways - if you don't pack the scrubber material properly, for example, the CO2 will "channel" - after all it's a gas and will find the path of least resistance - and before you know it you are breathing in less O2 and more CO2.

Yeah... rebreather diver here.

Desktop hypervisors are like buses: None for ages, then four at once

TonyJ

Re: Hyper-V Type1

"...These are "desktop hypervisors", just as it says in the title. This fills a different use case than a server...

XenClient by Citrix (later dropped and now available as OpenXT is a desktop, bare metal hypervisor.

NXTop was another one, but Citrix bought them and killed it off.

Type 1 and Type 2 determine bare metal or inside another operating system and have nothing to do with the type.

Amazon CEO wants his staff back in the office full time

TonyJ

Re: lucky escape

Funnily enough, me too. Three times different hiring "managers" reached out. Twice they just stopped responding and the third time, I didn't bother replying.

TonyJ

Re: Sorry, but I cant agree with you... :)

You know some jobs require that person to act as an interface and be on calls. That you can't understand it (or what I've already followed up with), says more about your closed mind than anything else.

Which is probably why you chose to post anonymously.

TonyJ

Re: Sorry, but I cant agree with you... :)

Some of it is by choice and some of it is necessary and some of it is wasteful bullshit but it's a load I take so my architects are free to get on with their jobs without being called into endless, pointless, meetings. I can protect them by taking that load over for their benefit.

There's a roughly 60/40 split customer and internal calls.

And just because they're in my diary doesn't mean I automatically attend - I manage my workload very well and have the freedom to choose what is and isn't important enough to involve me.

It's our most valuable client (in revenue terms) so that extra bit of loving is fine as far as I am concerned. Oh, and I don't work early or late except by exception and I ensure I take regular breaks, including a full hour for lunch (except again, by exception), away from my desk.

So no, the way I deal with it is far from nonsense because I don't allow to become such. That only comes about when your autonomy is taken away - like being forced into an office. I have an incredible balance to my work and work/life because I manage my own time.

TonyJ

Re: Sorry, but I cant agree with you... :)

100% agree.

My diary is already always 75-80% full of Teams calls. The idea of them being face-to-face meetings would be horrendous. I mean, an awful lot of them are already unnecessary but it would be worse if they were unnecessary and needed me to travel to them.

And, as I've previously mentioned, my team of 6 are spread across Europe. Myself and one other in England (but 150 miles apart), and another in Scotland so hardly easy to commute, just for the UK guys.

I get more done because people aren't stood over my shoulder wanting "a quick chat" all the time and I can simply set a status when I need to go undisturbed.

And the customer is pan-European, soon to also include APAC, so yeah, there's that as well.

I do occasionally have face to face meetings but not too often and it works.

Not every job can be done remotely but where they can, it makes a lot of sense to allow it. And that's before commuting, costs of travel/fuel/parking etc etc etc

If HDMI screen rips aren't good enough for you pirates, DeCENC is another way to beat web video DRM

TonyJ

Re: and the like is doomed

Also, remember the "you wouldn't download a car..."

Wrong! I absolutely would have, if I could have! :-)

TonyJ

Re: and the like is doomed

"...DRM currently has a 0% success rate in stopping copyright infringement. Which means that the only thing it does is make life harder for legitimate paying customers..."

Exactly - remember the anti-piracy messages at the start of DVD's that you couldn't skip?

Anyone ripping them cut that entire thing, so anyone watching an actual pirated copy wasn't bothered by the hassle. Legitimate purchasers had to sit through them, though.

Research suggests more than half of VMware customers are looking to move

TonyJ

"...A few words:

Install Proxmox.

For corporates:

Install Proxmox, pay for support..."

The biggest problem here is that they only provide support between 9am and 5pm Austrian time (not Australian, as my phone so helpfully autocorrected it to last night without my noticing!).

And that is fine if it's all you need but I have customers that need 24/7 vendor support for when production systems die.

You have to be careful that what you're suggesting is fit for the market it's going into.

TonyJ

Re: Open source replacements not good enough ?

"You can buy a support contract from Proxmox...what are you talking about?"

And as long as 9am to 5pm Australian time works for you fine.

What happens for customers like mine that require 24/7 support?

TonyJ

Re: Open source replacements not good enough ?

It's a nice idea but we're stuck with a couple of problems.

C-suites like the idea of someone (i.e. a company) that they can shout out when things go wrong. They like the idea of guaranteed support levels and things like SLA's.

Time - time is really not on their side to do this. I can tell you from experience (see my comment above) that customers are looking and looking to do something fairly quickly.

Expense & complexity. It's likely that the features that I want, aren't necessarily the features that someone else wants or the ones they want and so on. Deciding what to prioritise comes at a cost in terms of financial and time and if someone feels they aren't getting the love they believe that they're paying for, then they're likely to walk away leaving others with higher bills. There's also the question of longevity - one of the selling points of virtualisation is the ability to run up virtual machines that may have been created on versions from many releases ago. Who's to say these FOSS offerings can provide that level of longevity?

Not saying it isn't a viable option if non of the above are show stopped, but for many, I think that they will be just that.

TonyJ

Re: Consider Yourself

You are correct, however, I am currently consulting with a very large pan-European client who is actively looking at alternatives, given their VMware bills are coming in at something like 8-10x what they were.

This is much more than a maybe. There is nothing in VMware that excludes them from other offerings (they don't leverage any of their expensive components). Of course that may be trickier for some consumers of VMware.

Apple is coming to take 30% cut of new Patreon subs on iOS

TonyJ

Re: When Apple does something, I am willing to pay Apple.

"...Though most of it is still x2 to x4 overpriced...

Just for a bit of balance, have you seen the price of a flagship Samsung phone?

Also massively overpriced.

TonyJ

Re: But which interface

I mean you could just install Outlook for Android, or use the inbuilt one called Email, or the inbuilt one called GMail, or... yeah you make a fair point for, say the Samsung devices. Lots of repetition. And different app stores (Galaxy Store vs Play Store) which allow you to install the same app twice in some cases.

However, I just got given back an older Note 8 that I'd given my Dad, after he upgraded to an S22 (and as I've mentioned previously, he's rather technophobe). He went through the migration himself from one to the other and is happy with everything.

I decided to drop LineageOS onto the Note8. Entirely as an exercise in how to and to test e.g. banking apps in readiness for moving my own phone onto it.

And whilst it's not a process for the non-technical, nor is it that onerous. And as we often support our own families etc I'd expect most readers here to accomplish it with very little drama or issue.

The end result is a very clean OS and even with the open sourced GApps it isn't cluttered with a ton of bloat and multiple apps that all do the same thing. In fact with the version I put on, there isn't even an email client included.

All the banking apps just work (in a much, much, earlier version I tried several years ago some of them decided that the unlocked bootloader / lineage = rooted and wouldn't launch).

All the functions of the phone work (with one quirk - take the stylus out, and it reboots the phone so you can then use the stylus. Put the stylus back in and... it reboots the phone, to stop using the stylus, but given I never use it anymore it's not a huge issue for me, personally).

All of which is a long winded way to say it's a very easy to use, clear and simple interface that both looks good* and just works.

*Obviously that's to my own personal tastes and YMMV.

Under-fire Elon Musk urged to get a grip on X and reality – or resign

TonyJ

Re: Pedo Guy to the rescue!

"...Bless their little cotton Nylon socks..."

WordStar 7, the last ever DOS version, is re-released for free

TonyJ

My one and only encounter with Wordstar...

...was back in the very early 90's (around 1990-1991).

As part of of thesis, I had the task of building a plotter, but it had to have a function and the one chosen was to read a barcode and reprint it. Oh I had to design and build the barcode wand, as well.

I mean... really... of all the use cases, this was effectively an overcomplicated photocopier, but I digress.

The kit we were programming on was some esoteric all in one device that had a hexadecimal keypad, a series of 7 segment displays and a few limited ports - a serial and parallel if my memory serves, as well as an edge connector that exposed one of the buses.

We did have the luxury of being able to write the code on a PC which allowed us to use assembly language, then generate the hex output, and print it, but then manually input it on the keypad.

My first hurdle was the sheer size of the program itself. It wouldn't fit - the lookup table alone ran to something like 4x the available RAM on the board, so I had to design and build a memory expansion. That went onto the edge connector. I seem to recall from memory (no pun intended) that the system itself could recognise up to an additional 32kB of RAM as long as you got things like the timing and trigger circuits correct.

The next issue was that the program wouldn't fit in the application we used to code on the PC (I forget what it was - it was over 30 years ago!). So... I was given a copy of Wordstar and told to write it in that... which was kind of useless given it had none of the compile-to-hex capabilities I needed.

But given that I now had a ton of RAM spare, I decided in my infinite youthful wisdom that it would be easier to transfer the program straight from the PC rather than coding it in manually every time so I reverse engineered the original program and made it read in the Wordstar file, strip out the bits it didn't need and pipe the output into the board via serial cable. Which also meant of course I had to write the program to transfer it. I think that I burned that to an EPROM in the end to save having to type it in manually each time, which meant I kind of had my own kit.

Every character from A-Z (upper and lower case) and the numbers 0-9 was in a lookup table that was simply a series of commands for driving the stepper motors in the plotter (which was very simply an x/y and a relay to lift and lower the pen).

It all worked and it was an excellent learning experience for projects in later life and how they have a tendency to grow out of all proportion if you don't get the details right from off the bat.

I learned more about barcodes than anyone needed to know. It was actually fun for the most part - just a series of ever expanding challenges to get it working but other than being a learning exercise it was otherwise utterly pointless in practice. :-)

Revamped UK cybersecurity bill couldn't come soon enough, but details are patchy

TonyJ

Re: Bill needs sanctions for patches not adequately tested

Remember when Windows had a last known good configuration boot?

It's a long time ago, so my memory is hazy, but I seem to recall it would boot sans newly installed software/drivers. I have vague memories of it being a bit hit-and-miss, but surely it's not beyond the realms of ability to add this [back] in?

Also I note with interest that the persistent desire to reduce/weaken/ban end-to-end encryption seems to be missing from the list. Have they finally woken up to how catastrophic that would be?

Kaspersky gives US customers six months of free updates as a parting gift

TonyJ

Re: Is it a trojan horse offer?

Not to forget that Kaspersky have been behind lifting the covers off of a few US groups such as the equation group.

It may well be that they've pissed off too many people in the right places, over the years.

Xen Project in a pickle as colo provider housing test platform closes

TonyJ

Re: QubesOS relies on Xen

I could never quite get along with Qubes.

But if you still need bare metal on desktop/laptop hardware then take a look at OpenXT - it's what became of Citrix's Xen Desktop.

It doesn't have the app granularity of Qubes, as it separate the OS's (or did, the last time I looked into it).

https://openxt.org/

Outback shocker left Aussie techie with a secret not worth sharing

TonyJ

DC is nasty. He was *very* lucky.

TonyJ

Re: Ouch!!

The house I am in now was previously owned by a guy who owned a local factory of some kind.

According to my neighbours, he had a handyman (one of his <cough> "engineers" from his factory, apparently).

Said handyman did an awful lot of electrical work.

And earthed absolutely none of it.

A quick list from memory (and there was much more): a 32A commando socket in the garage: earth bent out of the way at 180 degrees and no sheath; extractor fan in the kitchen (all stainless steel - nothing on the earth tabs from the motor feed), outbuildings (no earth at the fuseboard in the first building), three out of 5 sockets in the kitchen...no earth attached, no sheath.

Quick (wago) connectors used to join cables but then not put into the outer boxes, and left laying on a shelf in the outbuilding above head height.

Electric gate controller - nice, wire armoured cable down to it from the garage. Ah... someone did something properly? Nope... No earth tab in the compression gland. No earth.

Oh and one of the en-suites has an electric shower. The isolator for that... in the built in wardrobe adjacent to, but outside the bathroom - a 32A cooker type switch (fine in terms of load for the shower in use, but less so in terms of easy access).

Once I'd fixed all the earth issues etc, I replaced the old wired fuse board with a modern consumer unit and RCBO's.

I genuinely think people fail to understand how dangerous mains electricity is because you cannot see or hear it unlike gas and water.

NASA ought to pay up after space debris punched a hole in my roof, homeowner says

TonyJ

Re: Sounds fair

Came to say just this. In the UK we're (currently) protected in this way with contracts.You write it so it's vague - either intentionally or not - and the benefit of the doubt goes to the other party.

In terms of insurers bad behaviour though - I was t-boned a couple of years ago. Completely the other parties fault, with witnesses to prove it.

However, their insurer tried: to say I was driving at excess speed which was a 50% contribution to the accident and then quibbled over the value of my car which was declared a write off.

For the speed, I had a tracker which showed I'd never gone above 18mph (the accident occurred within 200 metres of my home - I was taking the car to be serviced. At least I wasn't bringing it home after it had been serviced!).

In terms of the payout and valuation - I got about 85% of the value and then almost 18 months later I got the remainder.

The two payout sticking points were the value of my vehicle (as I said above) - it was a fairly unique set of factory fit features so in fairness it was hard to pin down, but they obviously wanted to low-ball it.

The other one, I can kind of see their point, though. The cost of the hire vehicle came in at something north of £50k... I only had it about 12 weeks! You could have literally bought the car.

It was all set to go to court before they finally settled out of court for an amount I never found out.

Of it all though, the thing that pisses me off the most is that even though I was the innocent victim of someone else's mistake, my own premiums went up considerably because now I'm seen as a "higher risk" driver. Greedy bastards all round.

HR expert says biz leaders scared RTO mandates lead to staff attrition

TonyJ

Re: Ain't nothing going on but the rent

It depends.

Of my current team, only two of us are even in England. I have two in Hungary, one in Scotland, one in Belgium, another in Germany on one is Slovakia.

The customer account I lead is based in Germany but has offices across Europe and APAC.

It makes no sense to go to an office to...have Teams calls.

Now on the other hand, if everyone were within commuting distance, it may make sense to have perhaps a day a week in the office together, but even then - probably not that frequently as there is literally nothing we need to do face to face that can't be done remotely.

Oracle Fusion rollout costs 15 times council's estimates in SAP rip-'n-replace

TonyJ

Re: AI

Oh so Fujitsu and the Post Office will build and run it, then?

Turns out teaching criminals to write web code keeps them out of prison

TonyJ

Re: Coding made me want to kill!

I mean that is true of everyone in every role in IT... :-)

TonyJ

Came to say pretty much this.

How come it comes as a surprise to learn that if you give people useful skills where they can be used to get a job and be self-sufficient, and with it, have greater self esteem, you see lower levels of recidivism?

Yes, punishment is a necessary component.

But treating prisoners like they are subhuman only goes on to perpetuate the issues.

You only have to look at places such as Norway to see how a prison system that is run properly can change the trajectory of a criminal's life.

Samsung shows off battery tech it says will see you gone in nine minutes

TonyJ

Re: Great news

Yeah... I can accept "far less likely to" but "won't" seems to just be tempting fate.

My driving miles have dropped by an order of magnitude from it's peak 20 or so years ago of an average of 1,000 a week to last year, just shy of 4,000 for the whole year which would put EV's into the more practical territory for me.

But one of the things that has put me off has been a lack of fast charging and infrastructure because whilst I would like to think that I'll never return to such ridiculous numbers of miles, there's no guarantee it won't go back up to 30/40k a year again if something like my job changes down the line.

The idea that I could park up, plug in, grab a coffee and a toilet break and be done in 10 minutes is *very* appealing. Add in the range. Add in the life. I'd be fully sold.

However, I've seen way to many battery concepts shown over the years that have never come to fruition that until such a time as I see them in a car, I'll remain cynical (and even then, I'll remain cynical about the stated life until evidence backs it up).

Microsoft really does not want Windows 11 running on ancient PCs

TonyJ

Re: Linux is fine

You still have the option of a perpetual version of Office without the subscription part.

It always surprises me that people don't seem to realise this.

It's also a little unfair to group the Office product suite of applications as a subscription whilst forgetting the other parts that come with it - Exchange Online, OneDrive, SharePoint etc etc. all of which can help with collaboratively working and having access to your work on multiple devices.

Yes, I know there are alternatives, but they aren't baked into the Office suite and again when you are talking about general users, they want the path of least resistance.

And in fairness if you don't need those online components, then buy the latest version of Office without them (though it'll go away eventually as MS want that juicy monthly revenue stream and associated lock in).

TonyJ

Re: Alternative

I disagree.

Where there are finance departments - and that can be one person - there will inevitably be macros and/or plugins.

And even where they are small companies, the moment they do business with a larger one, they'll be swapping documents that have inevitable been created in Microsoft Office.

The willingness to bend the truth to fit the narrative is overwhelming on here. Most of us work in heterogeneous environments where we are faced with a mix of applications, operating systems and hardware - on premise and in the cloud. Some of you are clearly lucky enough not to do that. Great. I am glad you're happy in that world (and that is not sarcasm), but the reality is that most of us aren't so insular.

Choose the right tool for the job. It's a great mantra but when you're faced with inertia and businesses that rely on the processes they've had forever, getting them to change can be a real challenge.

TonyJ

Re: Alternative

One of the things that *always* gets merrily overlooked when people start down the "just use Libre Office" route is just how many corporations run on Excel macros and plugins.

Seriously, it's a bad joke that won't go away.

And some big vendors push them out regularly (e.g. SAP). Entire finance departments run on them.

I am not, in any way, saying that it is right, but it just is.

Right now, I'm involved in a programme that has one department creating roughly 1.5 of the damn things a day. Yep - 30-35 of the damn things every working month.

I am pragmatic and will use whatever OS or package is best for the job at hand, but this rabid "just don't use Microsoft" really doesn't work without a LOT of planning, a LOT of training and a LOT of migration work in the background and even then, it won't be 100% because of things like the above.

TonyJ

Re: Alternative

"...You can use the online version of Office on Linux, I know because I’ve done it on my laptop. I know of at least one business that doesn’t use the standalone version of Office at all. Everyone uses the online version which makes working from wherever on whatever platform much easier..."

I pity anyone who has to do this on a regular basis. I find the online version of the applications - particularly word - can screw the visual formatting and make it really difficult to work with. It also still seems to lack some of the desktop application features.

It is doable, as a workaround, but not something I'd want to do on a day to day basis. Doubly so on long and/or heavily formatted documents.

How a single buck bought bragging rights in the battle to port Windows 95 to NT

TonyJ

Re: Nah.

Oh, I don't know.

I was quite fond of both Vista* and Windows 7. It seemed to be time when MS were actually trying to make an OS that worked, was reliable for users by not BSOD'ing if you as much as glanced at it the wrong way and looked quite pleasant on the eye. It feels like it's been downhill ever since.

I think we look fondly on 2000 because it was the first business class OS from MS that had things like plug and pray.

*As long as you ran it on a machine capable of it, of course. All the "Vista Ready" bullshit was...well just that. Bullshit.

Ad agency boss owned two Ferraris but wouldn't buy a real server

TonyJ

Well...

I was once called to a dead server which was used to run (bare metal) the AD, shares, printer queues, user profiles...well, everything.

This was for an airline. A cash rich middle eastern one.

Anyway, the UK MD had refused to pay for any kind of backup or second HDD to be RAID'ed as he felt the company were trying to rip him off. He had the same attitude to the PSU or a UPS.

There was a brownout that popped the PSU and HDD.

Having explained that everything needed to be rebuilt and if there wasn't a local copy, tough shit.

So once everything was recreated I sat down and his response to the question of "now do you see why we recommended all that resilience?" his answer was "yeah but now it's happened, it won't happen again..."

I have lots more similar stories.

Intern with superuser access 'promoted' himself to CEO

TonyJ

Seems more common than I thought

About 22/23 years ago, I worked for a large manufacturer. They were a Lotus Domino/Notes shop as well as big users of Citrix (the latter being the reason I was there).

One of the young lads on the helpdesk was a bit of a prankster and often got himself into a spot of bother for acting before thinking.

This one particular day, he was called out to one of the HR managers' for some problem on her desktop.

Whilst he was fiddling around with her computer, she went to get a coffee, leaving our intrepid plank alone for a few minutes.

Did I mention his dad also worked for the company at the same site. Not in am IT role, as I recall, but he had email.

He also had a sense of humour, so when he received an email from the HR manager that read "You're fired you bald bastard!" he knew it was a joke. He also had a good idea (he'd been on the receiving end of his son's pranks before) who had sent it, so he did nothing with it.

Again, though, the genius that the kid was, he didn't delete it from sent items.]

Yeah...you guessed it. The HR manager found the email and lodged a formal complaint. Due to his other pranks it ended up being a final written warning.

It was quite funny, though.

Job interview descended into sweary shouting match, candidate got the gig anyway

TonyJ

Similar experience

A good 15 or so years ago I drove a good few hours for a face to face interview.

On arriving, it was in the boardroom. The table was the usual sort of thing - very long and narrow.

There was one chair on "my" side, and the two guys each sat at opposite corners which meant that I could actually see both of them so when speaking to/looking at one I was almost turning my back to the other.

From the get-go it was incredibly bad-tempered. One would start to ask me a question for the other to interrupt them. Or I'd be mid answer and they'd interrupt me.

After a short while I'd had enough. I called an end to the interview, saying I had no idea what the hell they were playing at, but thank you for wasting a day of my time but I was done with it.

I hadn't even left the building when the agency called to say they liked me and wanted to offer me the job. I explained in robust terms precisely why I didn't want it.

Citrix reveals invitation-only 'Platform' license

TonyJ

Bye, Citrix

It was good while it lasted, but you've become ever more irrelevant in the modern world.

You were already expensive for what you offer over other options. I suspect this will force an awful lot of customers to look at alternatives.

Work for you? Again? After you lied about the job and stole my stuff? No thanks

TonyJ

HP

About a decade ago I did some work for HP at a defense firm.

The HP chap in charge was a classic sociopath. He had to micromanage everyone, was constantly rude and derogatory and liked to hold crucial information in his head then berate people for bothering him to try and get it.

And that's just some of his traits. He was genuinely obnoxious and a bully.

After a final bust up with him after he once again changed a process without telling me (proved I wasn't on the email chain - of course it was our fault for not sharing the information!) - I decided enough was enough. Life's too short and all that and there were better contracts, I decided not to renew.

A few weeks before, he called me to tell me (remembering I'd already said I wouldn't renew) to tell me that I wasn't getting renewed.... eh? I know.. I told you, remember?

About two or three months later he reached out to me to ask if I was looking for work because he had an opening in the team.

I always try not to burn bridges but in this case it was a real struggle and I might've laughed.

VMware takes a swing at Nutanix, Red Hat with KVM conversion tool

TonyJ

It would be nice

If they hadn't hosed the licensing/availability/partner relationships.

I've got projects stalled and serious discussions for alternative hypervisors.

What Microsoft's latest email breach says about this IT security heavyweight

TonyJ

Re: "Microsoft makes a good operating system"

"...The reality is that updates and security are inseparable unless we just don't give a damn. But, fundamentally, so is code quality to start with. If security were taken seriously at dev time, we wouldn't need so many darned 'updates'..."

I think that is only partly fair - some of the exploits we see are incredibly clever.

Where it is more than fair though is when we see the same kind of exploit being used over and over and over again.

TonyJ

Re: "Microsoft makes a good operating system"

Tried "New" Teams when it first came out. Had to go back to the "Old" Teams because if anyone started their camera or tried to share their screen it resulted in a black screen or frozen image on the screen.

Ok.. fair enough...it's still not really GA, so rolled back.

Then a shortish time later I was forced onto it.

About the only plus at that point was that the black/frozen screen seemed to have been fixed.

But synchronising statuses is right out of the window. I have it showing me/others out of office when the status is actually available. But of course, others will see available. Or maybe not. It's random.

Teams is an abomination. Updated outside of Office with little to no controls. Trying to do far too many things. Skype for Business did communications and tended to do it well. All they needed to do was add some form of persistent chat and it would be absolutely fine. But oh no...let's fuck around with OneDrive and SharePoint integrations and make a dogs dinner out of it.

Atari 400 makes a comeback in miniature form

TonyJ

Re: BBC B

What an incredibly odd thing to downvote.